


Black Currant

by contrequirose



Series: garden in your soul [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Candy Making, F/M, Implied/Referenced Torture, Multi, Recovery, Trent Ikithon Being an Asshole, this is so non-canon but they r happy, warnings for caleb's backstory and the issues it comes with
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2019-11-23 23:05:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18158213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/contrequirose/pseuds/contrequirose
Summary: There was a long, long time that she had thought that she would never be safe again.That any chance of being happy had been ruined with the poison that had killed her parents, the knife that Eodwulf had wielded against his, the fire that Bren had lost his parents and his self to.She is glad that she has been proven wrong.Sequel to Edelweiss





	1. you do not deserve this but here you are

**Author's Note:**

> this won't make any sense (or maybe just very little sense) unless you have read edelweiss, so go read that first!  
> this one is debatable much better written, I'm going to rewrite parts of edelweiss but for now...  
> take this and join me in my self-indulgent candy making knowledge

When they ran from Ikithon, Astrid – somehow, and it's ludicrous because she is not (was not) a cleric, or a druid, she can’t do this spell – managed to planeshift them to the Feywild.

And then planeshifted again, a few relative seconds later, to a beach in the middle of nowhere in the Menagerie Coast.

That should, by all rights, have been impossible.

She knows how hard planeshift is to cast, and what material components it requires, and even beyond the plane shift she had somehow cast greater restoration on Eodwulf and that is so not an arcane spell, she shouldn’t have been able to do that, that shouldn’t have worked –

She takes a deep breath, and tries – calm is something that she doesn’t think she'll be able to accomplish ever again, because right now she’s drowning – to at least stop spiraling.

They are on a beach.

She just used divine magic.

(she talked to a god. What the fuck.)

She tries to call up the dancing lights spell, so familiar to her hands, and nothing happens.

Fuck.

Okay.

That’s – not great. Acceptable. Probably what she deserves.

But not great.

She sits down in the sand next to where Eodwulf had already slumped into a crouch, and buries her face in her hands.

She just cries for a bit.

Maybe longer than a bit.

Bren is the one good at keeping track of time.

Was.

Oh gods.

The sun is setting by the time she stops sobbing, and she is still –

Everything is so much, right now, and if she tries to think about this she is going to come apart at the seams.

But its getting dark.

Eodwulf is staring at the horizon, next to her, and she leans on his shoulder.

“We need –“ her voice cracks, and she has to swallow and restart, “We need either shelter or camp, for the night.”

He doesn’t respond.

“Eodwulf.”

She pokes him.

“Wulf.”

He blinks, and shakes his head.

“Sorry.” His voice is quiet.

“It’s okay. We need – I don’t know where we are, and we don’t have anything. We need shelter for the night.”

They’re just in their pajamas, because they had been about to sleep, and the magic had acted before they could grab anything.

Nothing there was important (everything important was deemed unessential and trashed, or left at home, she’s never going to go home -), but they don’t have any components, or supplies, or armor.

She has a few spare knives that she still wore with her pajamas, and she knows Eodwulf has the same, underneath his clothes.

Never knew when you would need a weapon.

He scrubs a hand down his face and stands.

“Yeah. Yeah. Okay.”

He points to a small rock cluster towards the sand dunes and reeds of the edge of the beach, and continues, “Maybe there? Just to get out of the wind.”

She brushes sand off her pajama pants and nods.

Out of the wind sounds good.

It was warm before, but it’s growing colder as the sun dips below the horizon.

She wakes countless times that night, screaming and shaking, and Eodwulf does as well, and the huddle into each other and make it through til morning.

\---

They find a town, in the morning, and she trades in one of her knives for enough silver to buy them food and water and a nights stay at the inn.

They have no money.

They have no identification, no home, no family –

There are so many deaths on her consciousness.

But they are alive.

And alive they stay.

\---

Things are hard.

(She deserves it, she did terrible things, she killed people, she – she was tortured, and manipulated, and she was the person who cast the spell that killed her parents but Ikithon was the one who prepared it, and she doesn’t deserve anything but maybe, just maybe, she can live anyways)

But they manage.

They figure out, that first night in the town, that their ten-second layover in the feywild was. Not ten seconds.

Ten years, as it turns out.

Their bodies have aged, and their parents and Bren have been dead for a decade, and for them it was only two days ago.

It’s hard to really grasp.

It takes – it takes a while, but eventually they migrate from the tiny town they had found themselves near to a larger one – Nicodranas.

There’s a temple to the Archeart, here.

She goes and prays nearly every day.

She learns a lot of things, over that year.

She’s not a wizard, anymore. Instead, she finds divine magics called up to her fingertips, and she can heal now, instead of hurt.

Eodwulf is still a wizard. He doesn’t focus on conjuration, anymore.

He practices wards and shields in the boundaries of their tiny apartment, and they both sleep better knowing that they can’t be found.

Better is – relative.

Nightmares are terrifying, and she wakes up shaking and sobbing, and Eodwulf wakes up screaming, and yet – she gets to see her parents faces, and Bren’s face.

They suffer through them together.

It’s been a year since they ran. A year since the day their parents and Bren died.

They’ve made enough money, now – her working in a weaving shop, Wulf helping with a carpentry shop – to get gravestones, in the graveyard just outside the city limits.

She doesn’t know what her parents' plans for burial were, or what their wills had laid out for the house and their belongings.

She hopes someone in town took care of the house, afterward.

They have no bodies to bury, but its – it’s comforting to have something to mourn in front of.

They plant flowers every year, and she tries not to let her grief consume her.

She turns twenty (thirty in body, they have lost so much time), and she marries Wulf, because there is no one in the world she would rather live her life with and he is the only one who is ever going to understand, and he had proposed to her when they were ten years old.

(Their bed feels empty without Bren’s restless sleeping, and when they sign the marriage certificate in front of the town’s version of a lawmaster, she cries. Nicodranas allows for multi-partner marriages. They could have been so happy.)

Wulf is the one to bring it up, a couple of days after she’s turned twenty one (thirty one).

They are – not well off, but certainly doing fine, and they have more money than she thinks her parents ever saw in their lives. Blumenthal was a poor town. Nicodranas is not.

“Do you remember –“ he starts out, and then stops.

Memory is a tricky thing, what with entire chunks of their teenage years having been modified. The greater restoration she’d been able to cast had helped, but there are still things blurry, out of place – she has swathes of time missing from when she was a kid now, and even now sometimes she loses time. Its scary, but even as Wulf is dealing with the same thing it doesn’t usually happen at the same time. They help each other keep track.

She puts down her embroidery hoop and glances over to him. “Do I remember?”

“It was when that gnomish trader came to town, when we were ten – the day I proposed?”

She laughs, a little, and looks back at her embroidery.

“I do remember that, yes. You said that we were going to get married and start a candy shop.”

All her memories are bittersweet, now.

They had been so happy.

“Do you still want to do that?” Eodwulf has a note of – hesitation? Yes, hesitation in his voice, and it’s slightly concerning.

She stares at him, and starts slowly, “We already got married, _liebling_.”

“No, not that, I mean – the other thing.”

“The candy shop? We still don’t know how to make candy –“

“I’ve been talking with Faber – the man who runs the saltwater taffy store? He said he used to do hard candies as well, but he doesn’t have enough people anymore to do it. He – he said he could use an apprentice, or two?” his voice trails up at the end into a question, and she huffs a laugh.

“If it doesn’t work out, we can keep doing what we’ve been doing, I just – candy makes people happy. And I think it’s what I want to do.”

“Okay.”

Eodwulf startles, and she meets his eyes.

“I’m down. Candy’s cool.”

He laughs, bright and brilliant, and this is the happiest she’s seen him in years.

That’s worth a lot.

And it works out.

The day she turns twenty one, she and Wulf spend thirteen hours straight in the backroom of Faber’s Taffy, pouring hot sugar melt and molding it on the rickety machines that Eodwulf had spent hours fixing.

They sell out of the candy in less than three days.

The day she turns twenty two, Faber stops letting them call themselves apprentices and adds them on as business partners. Underneath the main sign for the shop is now a tiny sign, hand-painted in Eodwulf’s careful calligraphy, that reads _Edelweiss Confectionaries_.

They live above the shop now, instead of their terrible apartment, and Faber spends less and less time managing it.

He’s getting kind of old, for a halfling. It's good that he’s getting some rest.

(He teaches her to make taffy, and how to run the business, and he doesn’t care that some days she can’t get out of bed or that she and Wulf always wear long sleeves and need certain days off to visit the graveyard. He doesn’t ask questions, either, and he is nothing but kind.)

And when she turns twenty three (thirty three, man she’s old), Faber retires, and leaves the building to them.

And they are still – still not all there, still missing part of themselves, still dealing with memories that lurk in hidden corners and issues that hide under their skins.

But they are safe, and Wulf makes candy and smiles, now, and she does little illusion shows for the children in the lobby, and they are content.

 

 

 

 

The day that that contentment shifts is the same day that they make black currant candies in the shape of little flowers, set out for sale along with the spun sugar blossoms they’ve started to make, the normal assortment of saltwater taffy, and a new thing that they’re trying, where the candy is circular with little shapes inside. Right now they’re marigolds, flavored like oranges. She’s pretty proud of those, to be honest. And they sell well.

Its almost time for lunch, and she’s just about to close up the shop when a motley assortment of people come pouring into the shop. A halfling, a human wearing Cobalt Soul vestiges – a little weird, that, a monk so far out from the Empire -, a bright blue tiefling, and a very tall firbolg – and that is strange, to see a firbolg not in the north. It’s not her place to ask, but she wonders why they would bother to journey so far south.

Ah, well. Not her business.

“What can I get you lovely folks?”

The tiefling perks up, and she can just spot the edge of a tail start to twitch behind her. It’s a little cute, if she’s being honest.

“Hello! Do you sell candy? We’ve been looking for candy for aaaaages and all anyone ever has is pastries, and I love pastries but I’ve had maybe too many pastries and I wanted to try something different, you know?”

Oh, wow.

“We do sell candy, yes. We have saltwater taffy –“ she points to the bins of taffy across the counter, and watches as the tiefling’s eyes light up – “and some black currant hard candies, and some orange candies, and the sugar blossoms under the counter here.”

“That’s nice,” the firbolg chimes in, and they give her a slow smile.

She points out the pricing cards on the counter, and continues, “And if there’s anything you want to order, we can do that as well at a higher price.”

The halfling reaches up and grabs the cards, and leafs through them.

The monk – she’s just gazing around the shop, and she looks – bored.

Hm.

“Can I get some of the black currant candy, please? One of my friends told me that that was his favorite and I want to get him a present. And its funny! You guys have the same accent!” The tiefling beams, and she hums a little bit.

“How much do you want, of the candy? It’s about twenty pieces for a silver. The pieces are pretty small, just a warning.”

“Can I do five silvers worth? Thank you!”

She nods, and starts to package up the candy. The halfling has stopped leafing through the cards, now, and she places them carefully back on the edge of the counter.

“Would you like to take the candy now, Miss, or come back later –“

“We’ll come back later! And I'll bring my friend with the same accent, we’ve never met anyone else with that accent.”

“It’s – fairly rare.” She says, slightly uncomfortable.

In a flash, the newcomers exit the shop, and leave her alone with five silver and a packaging job to do.

Huh.

She closes down the shop for the moment, and joins Eodwulf in the back. He’s been working on new image candy all morning, and she can imagine that he’ll need a break.

He glances up when she comes in, and he looks hilarious – his hair is all frizzy from the heat of the candy, and he has dye smeared across his cheekbone and a flower petal stuck near his eyebrow.

She chuckles, and Eodwulf gives her an exaggerated frown in return.

“Anything interesting, out in the shop?” he says, pulling off his apron and washing his hands for lunch.

“A bit, yeah – a pretty motley crew came in, probably an adventuring party? Ordered a bunch of the black currant ones, they’re coming in later to pick it up. And one of them mentioned a friend with the same accent? That she’s going to bring in when they come to pick up the order.”

Eodwulf takes a bit of his sandwich, and chews for a second.

“Weird,” he says with his mouth full, and she shoves him a little.

He swallows, and continues, “Anything we should be worried about?”

She gets quiet for a second.

“I don’t – probably not. And I have the glyph up under the entry rug if it gets hairy.”

“Alright, then.”

And that’s that.

(She re-braids his hair, because it really is a mess. She’s not great at this – her fingers are usually a little stiff and sore, clumsy, probably a left-over of when she had broken them in her teens – no, of when Ikithon had broken them – but Eodwulf appreciates the effort.)

(He fixes it himself when she pretends to not be looking. Familiar habits.)

It’s almost sundown when the tiefling comes back, this time minus the firbolg but still with the halfling, the monk, and a new person – a rather… she’s not one to be rude, even in her head, to potential customers but he looks a little raggedy.

His hair, under the general travel dust that it’s wearing like a mask, is a red that sends a twist of grief through her core.

“Hello, again!” the teifling calls out, and then launches straight into a long stream of hurried sentences, “So I’m Jester and this is Nott-“ she points at the halfling, and she gives a sheepish wave – “and Beau-“ points to the monk – “And Caleb!”

And the red-haired man behind her looks up, his eyes not meeting hers in a –

Familiar way.

Oh, gods.

He looks –

Same hair color.

Same eyes.

The face that she had imagined Bren would have, had he been allowed to live past seventeen.

Different name.

It –

Bren is dead, and she misses him terribly, and she tells herself that’s all this is and she is just – having a moment.

That’s all.

She swallows down the grief that burns in her stomach, and gives a small wave, before hurriedly turning around to grab the candies.

As she does so, she wastes a spell slot – and she beats herself up every time she does this, because what if she needs those what if something happens, but nothing ever happens and this might be important – and she casts a quick, silent _sending_ to Eodwulf, who is still in the backroom.

She bites her lip, and thinks, _Can you come out here? Need a reality check. Nothing’s wrong, there’s just – something up, and I’m not sure what._

Eodwulf responds in a second, a quick _be right there_ , and she turns back towards the group.

The man looks – confused, almost. Like the face that Eodwulf makes when he has a word just out of reach on the tip of his tongue.

“So! I have your candy here, Miss Jester – is there anything else I can do for you today?”

The man’s body – twitches, for lack of a better word, when he hears her voice.

Hm.

She takes a second to brush her hand against the crescent moon charm hung around her neck, and the man – Caleb, Jester had said – his eyes follow her hand.

“You, ah – you worship the Archeart?” Caleb’s voice asks, and, yes, that’s definitely a Zemnian accent, and his voice even sounds like Bren’s, even sounds like a Blumenthal accent, even.

She frowns a little bit at his question, though, and she hopes that Eodwulf gets out here soon.

He’s better at talking to people.

“I do, yes. Have since I was a kid.”

Caleb’s eyes grow a little distant, and he responds hesitantly, “My parents used to. When I was a child.”

That.

A deeper frown tugs at the corners of her mouth.

The tiefling – Jester, she corrects herself – gasps, dramatically, and turns towards Caleb.

They start to have a slightly bickering conversation, and she tunes it out in favor of turning to where her husband has poked his way out of the backroom, braid (fixed now) trailing down his back.

“Hey, Astrid, have you seen the – Oh, hello!” He pretends to be asking her for something, and she loves him so much she could burst.

And –

The man's eyes, when Eodwulf enters, narrow a little bit. And when he says her name –

There’s a flash of – something, she wants to say recognition but she’s pretty sure she’s projecting –

And Caleb’s voice rings out, and its cracks in the middle but it's still understandable, and he says –

He says –

“Eod- Eodwulf?”

“Do I know you?” her beautiful, idiotic husband asks, seconds before he actually looks at the man in the lobby.

The halfling – Nott, she thinks – glances around, a growing panic in her eyes, and asks, “Caleb what’s – are they –“

And she has her fingers on a crossbow strapped to her side, and Astrid mentally prepares herself to get Eodwulf out of here.

The man – Caleb – he stares at the two of them, fear and terror in his gaze, and this feels so wrong, because he is familiar in a way that no one should be –

She slowly takes hold of the dagger under the counter, and she can see Jester and the monk enhancing worried glances out of the corner of her eyes, and she takes a breath.

She speaks in Sylvan, because it is the only language she knows that she cannot lie in, and the only language that a puppet wearing Bren’s face would not know.

“ _Who the fuck are you, and why in the name of all that’s just are you wearing my dead friends face.”_

The man across from her stares at her.

He –

He responds, and she is breaking, this cannot be real, she’s –

The man’s face is crumpling, and he whispers and yells all at once, “ _Are you with Ikithon? I don’t- I don’t understand what’s happening, did he send you?”_

Eodwulf’s face is stormy, and he looks like he's stopped breathing.

“ _I’m going to repeat this again, and you need to answer. Who – “_ and Eodwulf, her brave and also stupid husband, takes a second to breathe – and horror crashes over his face in a wave.

His voice breaks as he interrupts her.

“ _B – Bren? How – I don’t –“_

The other people in the shop here are yelling something, but it’s in Common so she doubts it matters, because this might be the most important conversation she’s had in five years.

“ _Bren._ ” And the man turns toward her, fear still clouding his face, and she lets herself hope, maybe, just a little bit.

“ _I swear that Ikithon did not send us. We haven’t – we broke ways with him a while ago. Did he send you?”_

Bren – she hopes to the Archeart that she is right and not just seeing things because she can’t do this again – Bren’s whole body flinches when she asks if Ikithon sent him, and that’s.

Not a good thing, because everything Ikithon did is horrifying and terrible but if he reacts like that, then that means he might remember –

“ _No, no he didn’t send me, I ran – I broke, and he had me in an asylum, and there was this woman – I ran.”_

Oh, gods.

The yelling has reached enough of a tempo that she’s worried that weapons will start flying.

“ _Bren, we will not hurt you or them if you do not hurt us.”_

Bren replies, instantly, and she feels like there’s ice melting within her soul.

“ _I’ll – I’ll get them to stop.”_

He turns and gestures something – not sign language, her skills are rusty but not that rusty, something more like thieves cant – and the other people in the shop calm down in increments.

She’s less worried that a stray crossbow bolt was going to take out the lamps, now.

Bren turns back to her, and – she wasn’t letting herself hope, before, but that is her best friend’s face, his eyes, his hair, the same twist to his words and accent, and she can feel herself start to cry.

“ _Are you hurt – are you safe? If these people have you captive, we can take them, I swear, Bren – oh, gods, he told us you were dead, we wouldn’t have left without you, oh my gods –“_

Eodwulf brushes against her side, and she takes a deep breath.

She then hopes over the counter, because fuck this, and goes over to Bren.

Well – she tries to, at least, because she’s almost instantly being held by the monk and she swears in Sylvan, about to cast something –

“Beau. It’s fine. Let her go.”

She can feel the woman behind her shaking her head, and she hears, “Dude, no offence, but if you get hurt because you’re charmed by these fuckers – I’m not letting that happen!”

Beau huffs out a humorless laugh, and adds, “You don’t have the best record with charm spells, man.”

Astrid calms down, a bit, because anyone that willing to try and stop an unknown force getting to a friend can’t be awful.

Probably.

“Beau.”

She releases her at Bren's whisper.

Astrid is – she’s by Bren’s side in seconds, and her hands shake.

“ _Are you – are you hurt? You have – Can I touch you?”_

It’s old habit to ask, but she also asks because Bren looks like he’s about to fall apart.

“ _Ja_ –“ he gets out, before being engulfed in her hug.

He’s alive.

He didn’t –

She left him –

Ikithon.

She lets go, and the other people in the room sans Eodwulf are staring in confusion, and Bren is alive, and this might be the greatest day of her life.

Eodwulf’s hands are gripped against the counter, white-knuckled.

“I think –“ he says, and the room turns attention towards him – “That we need to have a talk. A long one, preferably, and probably one with tears involved, but that’s apt, I’d say, considering the fact that you are not fucking dead –“

He starts crying halfway through the words, big gasping sobs, and she looks around –

It’s a little hilarious, kind of, because Bren – Bren looks terrified and hopeful all at once (and gods does she feel the same), but Jester, and Nott, and Beau – they all look completely, absolutely, confused.

She rubs at her face, and locks the front door to the shop.

“Do you, um –“ her voice sounds awful, damn – “Would you all mind coming inside? We have – we have better wards, and also couches, and drinks?”

Why does she sound so creepy.

What the hells, Astrid.

Bren nods, still staring at Eodwulf.

The rest of his friends just stare at her.

“We have candy? Just, leftovers, it doesn’t look as good as the ones that we sell but it tastes good, um, and I have – gods, what do I have, um – I have bread?”

She needs to stop.

No one says anything for a long moment.

“Bread is – good, _ja_?” Bren says, hesitantly.

Fuck.

Slowly – and she doesn’t blame them for not trusting her, she doesn’t trust this situation, something is Happening, capital H.

But slowly they file into the break room in the back, and Beau perches on the back of the couch, and Jester and Nott sit on the floor, and Bren sits on the couch.

She and Eodwulf collapse into some spare chairs across from it.

Bren clears his throat, and he says, “Could you – can you tell me what happened?”

He laughs a little, a horrible awful laugh, and continues, “I’m ah – a little uncertain of some details.”

She sits back in her chair, and side eyes Eodwulf, who looks back with panic in his eyes.

Okay, then.

Talking time.

“When – “ and she stops, because she does not know these people and it would not be her story to tell if they didn’t already know what happened to Bren, she can’t do this –

“We know about Ikithon, and about what he made you guys do to graduate.”

Beau scowls at her, her arms crossed.

Okay.

Okay.

“He messed with our memories. When you – when you broke, Bren – he made it so that we remembered you refusing to start the fire, and you tried to fight against Ikithon, and he – he started the fire, and then teleported away with you, and then he came back –“

She takes a deep gasping breath, and then another, to try and ward away the memories creeping in at the corners of her mind.

“He told us you failed. And that – we knew the price of failure.”

Eodwulf’s quiet voice joins in, “He came back with blood on his robes.”

“Yeah. And we – I didn’t question it, but we went to bed that night and something felt off, like I had candy stuck between my teeth except in my head and I pulled on it, and pulled and pulled and pulled – and I reached out, I guess, because the Archeart spoke to me, Bren, they talked to me – they said that they would take the lies away in return for service. And I knew something was wrong, and I accepted – and I knew what Ikithon had done.”

She swallows back a sob.

“And I told Eodwulf _edelweiss_ , and I somehow broke the webs on his mind, and got us out of there, and then for a handful of seconds – for a handful of seconds, we were in the feywild. And it was beautiful, Bren – and then we were here.”

“And we’ve been here for five years. Time was – it was off in the feywild, we spent ten seconds there, but I couldn’t really control what was happening. When we got here – to the Menagerie Coast – it had been ten years, and our bodies had aged but we. Hadn’t really.”

Bren stared.

He blinked slowly, and snapped his fingers and suddenly there was a cat in his lap, purring and nuzzling into his thigh.

“I –“

He stops.

Starts again.

“I broke. It was – “

He takes a deep breath.

“It was bad. Ikithon didn’t – he didn’t kill me, but for a very long time I had wished he had.”

The cat in his lap climbs up his torso and settles around his shoulders like a scarf, purring all the while.

Bren sinks his shaking hands into it’s fur.

“I was in the asylum for ten years. There was this women – she had a symbol of the Archeart. And she touched me, and the clouds blew away and – my mind is – “

His breaths come out shallow and too fast, and she wants so badly to hold his hand.

“Not, ah. Not all there, I don’t think. But it was worse before. And I – I killed a guard, and I took a necklace to hide me from Ikithon, and I ran. I ran for a – a long time. And then I met Nott –“ and he gestures to the halfling leaning against his legs, who’s still glaring daggers at Astrid, “and the rest of my – my friends.”

“I had. I had assumed that you were still with him. I am – I am sorry, for making that assumption, and not looking for you –“

Eodwulf puts his hand up. “Bren, gods, you had no reason to think we wouldn’t be – you wouldn’t have been able to find us, anyways, we took similar measures.”

She sniffles, and drops her head into her hands.

She speaks to the ground.

“We thought you were dead. We didn’t – we didn’t even question it, Ikithon lied to us about so many things and that was the one thing we didn’t question, we left you there for years –“

She’s properly crying now, ugh, tears and snot streaming down her face.

“Fuck – Bren –“

She breathes, for a second.

“I’m so glad that you’re alive.”


	2. maybe it is not about deserving; maybe this is the future that you have won

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was a long, long time that she had thought that she would never be safe again. That any chance of being happy had been ruined with the poison that had killed her parents, the knife that Eodwulf had wielded against his, the fire that Bren had lost his parents and his self to.
> 
> She is glad that she has been proven wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for taking so long writing this chapter! there should be one more chapter and then maybe an epilogue after this. enjoy!

 

She has never felt more hope in her entire life.

Bren – Bren was alive, and free, and she and Eodwulf were free, and they were never going to have to mourn him again because he is here, right in front of here.

He’s still staring at her, now, eyes combing her hair and face and clothes – she knows that she looks different then she did before, all harsh edges smoothed out with time and gradual hints of happiness, the scars from the academy hidden under sleeves and cloth.

Eodwulf, too, looks different now, hair grown out again and braided down his back, eyes crinkling at the corners.

Bren –

He looks tired, and there is dirt smudged under his nails and on his face, and he’s wearing a thick coat that he has to be sweltering in in the heat of the city and a cat wrapped around his shoulders but his eyes are the same, the same clear and bright blue and his hair is crimson under the dirt.

“I – I – um,” Bren says, and he looks to Beau who places a hand gently on his shoulder, face still stormy but slowly pushing past judgement.

He gestures to the others in the room, and pushes on, “This is – Beauregard, and Nott, and Jester. They – we are part of a group, called the Mighty Nein?”

Eodwulf blinks.

“Why is -?”

“They thought it was funny.” Bren shrugs. “And we needed a name.”

“Have you all – have you been together long?” She asks, and the halfling grins.

Her scratchy voice answers the question. “I’ve been traveling with Caleb for almost two years, and we’ve been with the rest of these idiots for about a year and a half.”

There’s a long pause, and then the halfling – Nott, she remembers – whispers, “Wait, shit,” and there’s a ripple, the faintest hint of an arcane barrier falling, and in place of the halfling there is a goblin, thick grey cloths wrapped around her figure and a porcelain mask laying on a chain around her neck.

Astrid and Eodwulf both don’t react – they have met goblins in this city before, because while they are uncommon it’s not exactly a rare occurrence – but she does wonder where they have been that makes her think that she needs to hide.

Nott has a look of panic on her face, but it fades as she and Eodwulf don’t react.

She settles back against the couch, and Bren glances at her with a look of fondness.

Eodwulf clears his throat.

“Are you going to be staying in Nicodranas long? I – if you are, we would love the chance to see you more before you leave again, Bren – or meet the rest of your party?”

His fingers brush against his pants in a repetitive motion.

Jester responds. “We will be, actually! Usually we don’t stay very long in the same place but some really bad shit happened recently so we are staying here to rest for a bit, since my momma is here and so is Orly and the crew right now –“

Bren smiles, wryly. “We were pirates for a bit.”

She blinks. Eodwulf blinks.

“Sorry, what?” she glances at all of them, and – gods, they aren’t kidding, are they.

Bren, a pirate.

She can’t get the image to work itself out in her head.

“Caleb, if you want… we could go get the others to bring them up to speed? Or you guys could come join us at the Chateau!” Jester’s tail flicks behind her.

Bren glances over at her, and then back to Eodwulf and herself. “I think – if you both want to?”

She nods, immediately, and Eodwulf mirrors the motion on the other side. There’s no way that they would be able to open the shop again today, not after this, and if being at the Chateau – and she wonders if they mean the Lavish Chateau, which boggles her mind almost, the idea of going there – makes him and his party more comfortable, she will gladly, gladly go with them.

Beau and Bren stare at each other for a long moment, a silent communication, before Beau’s eyebrow twitches and the lingering sense of doubt on her face fades. She gives the two of them a smirk, and nods at Jester’s suggestion.

They lock the shop up almost immediately, and within five minutes the whole lot of them are on the way to the wealthier parts of Nicodranas, her hand locked with Eodwulf’s.

Bren, Nott, Beau, and Jester walk in front of them a few paces, and every few moments Bren’s head turns around to look at them, as if to check if they’re still there.

She gives him the same fond look every time.

Before too long a time has passed, walking through the streets, they stop outside the backdoor of a building that she does, indeed, recognize as the Lavish Chateau.

Huh.

Jester leads them in, and they traipse through an empty back room and up the stairs into finely decorated living quarters, passing a dining room and kitchen on one level on their way up to the next.

“My Momma,” she chatters, “is probably still working, but Caduceus and Fjord and Yeza and Nugget and Luke and Yasha are all up here still.”

That’s a lot of people.

Oh, dear.

Jester throws open one of the doors in the hallway, and they move inside.

There are couches here, covered in ornate pillows and throw blankets, and there’s a series of doors that probably lead to more bedrooms in the back. Seated close to the window is an enormously tall Aasimar woman, with a half-orc sitting on the ground next to her, a large dog in his lap. The same firbolg from earlier is seated on one of the couches, with a halfling man and a young halfling boy near him on the same couch.

The halfling man looks up as Nott comes in, and the smile that he gives is radiant. She sits next to him, and they lean into each other, the boy scrambling up to go sit in their laps.

The half-orc and the woman both look up as well, as their motley crew comes pouring in through the door. She catches the flash of panic that crosses his face when he sees them before its smoothed out by a carefully calm mask.

The firbolg doesn’t look surprised. He just keeps sipping his tea.

Jester waves her arms. “Yeah, so that is Yeza and Luke, and that is Caduceus, and that is Fjord and Yasha and Nugget, the best dog, aren’t you Nugget!” She points out each individual in turn, and as she mentions the dog’s name it perks up and then – phases out of existence in the half-orc’s lap and blinks into existence right in front of Jester.

“Guys, this is Astrid and Eodwulf, they are Caleb’s friends and were also maybe evil once but definitely aren’t now.” Jester grins through her words, exuberance practically pouring off of her.

Fjord stares at them, the calm mask still on but hesitation behind his eyes.

“Jester, are you sure everything’s all right?” He says, eyes tracing the group.

Bren – she cannot see his face, from where she is standing, but she can knows him – knew him nearly as well as she knew herself and he is still carrying tension, even here among friends.

“Everything’s fine, Fjord.” His voice is soft, but steady. He sits down on one of the couches opposite Caduceus and Nott and the others.

Fjord still looks hesitant. “If this is another –“ he drags a hand down his face, “- another thing like what happened in Assarius –“

Nott looks up at that, and covers the ears of the boy in her lap. “Pussy!” She says, and Jester descends into giggling.

Fjord looks up at the ceiling like he’s asking the gods for strength, and she can just barely see the ghost of a smile on Bren’s face.

“Alright – thank you, Nott, for reminding me that we need to figure out a better way to do that – nice to meet you, Astrid, Eodwulf. Can I ask where you know Caleb from?” His eyes are still suspicious.

She glances at Wulf – he just looks faintly panicked, he never was the smooth talker, and to be fair she wasn’t either, that had been Bren’s specialty, but – she cleared her throat.

“We, uh – we had been friends, as children, and then attended the academy together. We – we had thought him dead, for a very… rather a very long time.”

She wrings her hands together. “We escaped from Ikithon the same night that we had assumed he was dead.”

“It’s – not really a discussion to be had with a child present, but we have not been in the Empire in fifteen years and we are very, very glad to have found Bren alive.”

Fjord scans her face, and then gives a nod, eyes finally losing the suspicious look. Yasha, on his other side, gives her a look full of undeserved sympathy.

“Would you like to sit down?” Bren asks, cat still coiled around his shoulders. He still looks tense, but with every passing minute that his friends don’t act against them, he loosens.

She and Wulf sit next to him on the couch, placing him in the middle without conscious thought.

Bren always was their center, before. It’s ingrained, even all these years later, that he would be in the middle.

Slowly – ever so slowly, Bren relaxes into the cushions, and ends up leaning against her, the tiniest brush of him against her shoulder.

Gods, she missed him so much.

She and Eodwulf exchange a look over his head – and she’s still taller than him, Eodwulf taller still – and she can read every ounce of hope and grief and happiness in his eyes.

Caduceus, across from them, smiles, and starts to pack up his tea set.

“I think,” he says slowly, “that we should let them have some privacy, hm?” Nott, still curled up with Yeza, makes eye contact – a rare thing for Bren, and it shows how much he trusts that woman – and whatever she sees in his eyes has her nodding and scooting off the couch with Luke wrapped up, half asleep in her arms. Yeza follows, and she, the two halflings, and Caduceus all disappear into one of the bedrooms.

Beau locks eyes with Bren – again, with the eye contact. He must really trust these people. She pats him on the shoulder as she passes by, and ends up steering Fjord and Yasha out of the room. Fjord glances back as he leaves – still a little cautious, and she doesn’t blame him, but he gives Bren a soft smile.

Jester, Nugget hauled up in her arms, bounces on her toes, gives them a wink, and follows the others out.

And then they are alone.

It’s silent, for a minute.

Eodwulf is the one who breaks that silence.

“Do you – do you want us to call you Caleb?”

Bren inhales, a shuddering breath.

“I don’t – I don’t. I haven’t been Bren in a very long time.” The cat on his shoulders slips into his lap, and he sinks his fingers into its fur.

“If you would rather – I can call you Caleb, if you want.” She blinks a stray tear out of her eye, and leans a little harder into the point of connection between her shoulder and his.

He shrugs. “I think – I can’t – I’m not him, anymore. I don’t want – I don’t want to be the Bren that he made me be. And, ah – I like – I like being Caleb. I like who I am now, usually.”

Eodwulf leans in on Br-Caleb’s other side, sandwiching him carefully between them.

“We can call you Caleb, _liebling_.”

Caleb’s body looses an entire line of tension when Wulf calls him _liebling_ , and she makes the conscious switch into Zemnian.

She hasn’t gotten the chance to speak it with anyone other than Wulf, not since they had lost him and lost their home.

“Caleb is a good name. And if you would give us the chance, we would – we would very much like to get to know the person you are now.”

He shudders, and then with a swift movement buries his head in her shoulder, Eodwulf moving with him and slipping an arm around both of their shoulders.

“I thought – I thought that you were gone, beyond saving. I remember every moment, every inch of pain that Ikithon inflicted upon us and I had broken but you hadn’t and I had assumed that you were still with him – Gods, Astrid, I didn’t even let myself hope that you wouldn’t –“

She runs a cautious hand through his hair, and he makes a sound not dissimilar to the cat he has in his lap.

Muffled, he says, “I was worried that Ikithon would find me one day, and I would either have to let you kill me or watch you die.”

Wulf’s face spasms. “Gods, _liebling –_ “

Caleb continues, voice still muffled but almost frantic. “And before I met them, before I met these people – everything was so empty, and worthless, and I had spent ten years lost inside my head and being outside of it was nearly unbearable and if Ikithon had found me then I would have let him kill me. But I – I am so, so glad that he didn’t, because I found them and now I’ve found you again, my friends.”

Astrid can feel tears creeping down her cheeks, and she swipes them away with a spare hand.

“Caleb – gods, I am glad you’re alive.”

Eodwulf nods, silent.

Caleb brings a hand out from where he had been petting the cat in his lap, and rubs at his eyes.

“What’s – does  the cat have a name?” Wulf asks, as he sneaks a hand down to pet the cat as well.

Caleb laughs, almost, an exhale of breath that’s nearly silent but still present.

“His name is Frumpkin. He’s my familiar – I am – I wasn’t very coherent, when I summoned him, and he looked just like him.”

“He looks very polite.” Wulf pets him, and smiles.

She huffs out a laugh.

Caleb reaches down to pet him again, but his hand stops in mid-air.

He sits up a little more, head moving from being shoved into her shoulder.

“Did you – did you get married?” He asks, a finger reaching out to trace the band on Eodwulf’s hand.

Eodwulf takes it off and hands it to Caleb, who takes it and smooths his fingers over it in his palm.

“We did, yeah. And hey – we got a candy store –“ she whispers, and tries not to think of the third matching band that’s placed among the other devotional items in the mini altar that she keeps to the Archeart above the shop.

Caleb gives the band back to Wulf, and hesitantly laces his fingers with hers, without looking at her.

“I’m. I’m glad.”

He looks over at Wulf, who’s staring at him with something unreadable in his face.

He laces the fingers of his other hand with Wulf’s.

She can trace the familiar patterns of scarring across his knuckles and up his arms, where the sleeves are pushed up, and she knows that those scars are echoed on her own arms and echoed on Eodwulf’s arms, just how she knows the memories that are within his head and the bravery that he has kept in his heart since he was a child.

She takes a deep breath.

“We, um. When we – when we thought you were dead. And when we had been living here, for a while, and had enough money –“ she stops, voice catching within her throat.

“We got gravestones, for our families. In the yard outside the city. So we – we couldn’t bury them, we couldn’t honor them the way we honored my grandparents when they died when I was a kid but we could do that, at least.”

Caleb’s grip tightens on her hands, and she can see the tear trailing down his cheek.

“I guess we can scratch your name out, now, huh,” she near-whispers, and is rewarded with a cross between a laugh and sob out of Caleb’s mouth.

They sit there, three people who had grown up and grown together and suffered together and lived, gods, lived to see this moment.

They had – they had, all three of them, done terrible, terrible things in the name of an Empire that had ground them to dust in the name of duty.

They lapse into silence, Caleb curled up in between them, safe.

They’re safe.

There was a long, long time that she had thought that she would never be safe again. That any chance of being happy had been ruined with the poison that had killed her parents, the knife that Eodwulf had wielded against his, the fire that Bren had lost his parents and his self to.

She is glad that she has been proven wrong.

Because this, right here – her husband and her best friend, curled up on this couch in a city that she has fallen in love with, with a shop where she makes people happy and a life that is so, so different from what her teenage self had dreamed about but so much better than any alternative – this is right.

She doesn’t deserve this, but it’s – it’s not about deserving.

Because this is the life and happiness that she gets.


	3. We can face any storm together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her hand, when she reaches out, fits into his own as if they had never been apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for such a short chapter! next one will be an epilogue of sorts!  
> there might be another sequel to this that's going to be Wild considering the draft is currently close to the length of both this and the first one together oops

Caleb Widogast is thirty five years old.

He has spent so, so many years under the shadow of Ikithon.

But now – this moment, here on a couch in his friend’s mother’s house, with two people that he had thought he had lost forever – this is not shadowed by Ikithon.

This is a moment that feels like it’s shedding light into his very soul.

He’s curled on the couch now, shoved in between Astrid and Eodwulf who have both stopped talking at this point and are half-asleep, Astrid’s head tilted back against the back of the couch and Eodwulf having leaned so far over at this point that he’s using Caleb’s arm as a pillow.

Frumpkin is still curled up in his lap, purring up a storm, and every so often Wulf reaches down to pet him.

He’s halfway to falling asleep himself, honestly. He hasn’t felt this relaxed in –

A long time, probably.

Because – the only people who would reliably recognize him, as he is now, was Eodwulf, Astrid, and Ikithon himself. And with Astrid and Eodwulf safe – and Ikithon still in the empire, and them here – the chances of him being recognized are.

Slim.

He won’t say nonexistent, because he knows better than to put his faith in uncertainty but this is –

More than he ever thought he could have.

Because his friends, his –

His –

Family is the word that he won’t let himself say, even though he loves them with parts of his soul that he thought he had lost in flames.

Now is not perfect.

Nott is still stuck as a goblin, but she has her husband and her son safe and with her, and there are still things that they need to do – help Caduceus save his home, figure out what to do about the whole Uk’otoa situation, check in on Beauregard’s brother, so now is not perfect, but it is…

Okay, maybe.

Maybe, he thinks, things can be okay.

Eodwulf has actually fallen asleep next to him, now, his breathing softened and regular.

Astrid is still awake.

He can’t –

They got married.

And they have a candy shop, and Astrid has an Archeart pendent around her neck and they thought him dead and made sure that his name was memorialized alongside his parents, alongside their parents, part of the grief that she and Wulf have been living under all these years.

He has a perfect memory.

Every part of Ikithon’s training – parts that he dearly wishes he could forget – is struck in vivid memory in his mind, other than the fragments tempered by panic and fear that washed out all the colors and leave him only with the memories of terror. He can count every crystal that he placed under his skin, every scar that he had left in his wake.

But he also remembers long, sleepless nights made better by the people beside him, Wulf’s hands in his hair before it was shorn and Astrid’s soft, hesitant voice singing Zemnian songs that they all knew by heart, his own hands creating illusion shows to go along with the songs.

He remembers growing up, three friends tied together, making plans for a future that had never came –

Eodwulf’s entire plan for the future was the three of them together, making candy.

He had long since mourned that future.

But they – they had gone on and built it without him.

He is glad, he really is, but –

Maybe –

“Br- Caleb?” Astrid whispers, and places a gentle hand on where he had been starting to pick at the skin on his arms again.

He stops, and places his hands back on Frumpkin in his lap.

“Sorry,” he whispers.

She shakes her head. “Can I – can I braid your hair?”

He nods, silently, and she wiggles her arms out from where they had been trapped between him and the couch and starts to thread her fingers through his hair.

Nott has braided his hair many, many times while they have been together, weaving in flowers along the way.

He doesn’t have any in now – those had all gone to Yeza and Luke, braided with shaking hands on the way home from Xorhas.

Astrid was never good at braiding, but the feeling of her hands in his hair is familiar comfort.

He sinks into her touch, and closes his eyes for a moment.

He can feel her take a deep breath, behind him.

“Caleb, I – I’m so sorry.”

“Astrid, what –“

“I should have realized that you were alive. I should have – I didn’t feel anything, when I – I should have realized something was wrong before. It shouldn’t have taken – I should have done more. I should have – I left you. You were stuck in that asylum, you said – I left you to that fate, I didn’t even come out of it without a god having to point it out to me – gods, Caleb, I let him tell me you were dead and I didn’t question it. I’m sorry.”

She tugs slightly too hard on his hair and then relaxes instantly, fingers tracing over his head in apology.

He grimaces, slightly.

“ _Liebling_ – it wasn’t your fault. He – he changed your memories. You didn’t leave me with him.”

“I didn’t even think – he lied to us constantly, and I never questioned –“

“We were – we were children, Astrid. I don’t – I don’t consider myself blameless, for what horrors I did under that man’s command, but if I – if I was the weapon, he was the one wielding it.” He swallowed bile at the back of his throat and continued. “If a sword harms a person, you blame the person wielding it, not the sword itself.”

Eodwulf, still leaned on his shoulder, hummed incomprehensibly and burrowed further into his shoulder.

“I guess – I’m still sorry, Caleb. That – that you’ve been alone, for so long. I had Wulf – but you were – I don’t – if I hadn’t had him, Caleb, I’m not sure I would have made it.”

Her fingers stilled in his hair.

“I had Nott, and the others – but before that, _ja_ , it was not – “

He had spent years being nothing. Not a person, not someone with a name or home or food source, just a mess of dirt and rags stumbling and trying to survive.

Admittedly, he hadn’t been trying very hard until he was thrown in the jail cell.

“It was not great, Astrid.”

She taps the back of his head, and he leans a little forward of pure instinct as she takes a tie off her wrist and ties off his hair.

He leans back into her after she finishes, and she tucks her head over his.

She always was taller than him.

Wulf as well.

“I’m – I’m glad you have them. Your new friends.”

“I – I am as well, _ja_.”

He traces a circle in Frumpkin’s fur, and his cat gives out a little soft “Mrrp,” before he closes his eyes again.

“We have been through a lot, together.”

She hums behind him, and he can feel the vibration through the top of his head.

“I told you that we were pirates, _ja_? We actually – we had met at the circus …”

He speaks for – a minute, and then five, and then ten, the story of the ridiculous people that he calls friends spilling out of him like water through a dam.

Eodwulf wakes up thirty seconds in and listens as well, hands writing out arcane sigils unconsciously in his lap, a habit he recognizes and starts to echo with his fingers in Frumpkin’s fur.

The circus, the swamp – he skims over the mines, and the shepherds, marked as they are by bad memories and –

He stops, for a long moment, before he tells them of a friend buried and a coat left on the side of the road, colorful moments that had been dissolved in that dirt.

He tells them of the ocean, of pirates and fools, of the happy fun ball – he skims again over Yussah, as a topic left for later considering that he still lives in this city, and he tells them of Xorhas, of trying to blend in and failing miserably until they stumbled into becoming war heroes.

He falls silent some time later, months of memories fresh on his tongue.

Eodwulf is still leaned on him, but over the course of the story he has undone the braid in his hair and let it down, gold spilling over his back.

Astrid has redone the braid in his own hair at least three times over by this point, each time getting looser and looser until he’s fairly sure that what his hair looks like is not a braid but rather simply a rather large knot.

He – he doesn’t mind.

He would let Astrid do a great many things to his hair.

“That’s – Caleb, I think you actually managed to find people weirder than you are,” Wulf says, and the three of them descend into slightly hysterical laughter, the reality of the situation setting in.

He missed them.

He hadn’t let himself feel it, or think about – his friends, the people he has spent his life with, stomping through streams and eating candy and studying with, the people that he thought he had lost forever.

But he missed them.

He falls asleep there, leaned up against Astrid and Eodwulf, the three of them entwined in a manner that is as casual and familiar as anything else in his life.

When he wakes, it is nearing seven, and there’s a soft blanket draped over all three of them, a glass of water and a button left on the coffee table.

He smiles, soft on his face.

Nott has been so happy, these past few weeks after finding Yeza. Most of her attention is spent on him and Luke, but even still she manages to do little things for him.

Mostly buttons that he finds tucked into his pockets when he reorganizes for the night.

Eodwulf snores, next to him, and he tucks the button into a spare pocket of his coat. There’s a shuffling sound, next to him, and Astrid sits up slightly, blinking the sleep out of her eyes.

She stares at him for a long moment, blinks again, and then smiles.

He smiles back.

Her hand, when she reaches out, fits into his own as if they had never been apart.

 


	4. Elvendawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is Elvendawn, and there is a ring burning a hole in Astrid's altar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :3

Caleb has been in Nicodranas for nearly four months when he gets the first inklings that Astrid and Wulf are planning something.

He and his friends – they had decided to stay in Nicodranas, at least for a little while, to give Luke and Yeza and Nott the time and space to settle after all those years apart, and to give Jester more time with her mother, and to give himself time with his –

With his friends.

Still, still – only friends, he tells himself, and tries not to think of why that thought makes him sad.

But his friends – they are planning something, he’s sure of it. Because he has been spending the past few weeks alternating between sleeping in his room at the Chateau and on Astrid and Eodwulf’s stupidly comfortable couch, but these past few days Astrid has been making excuses as to why he couldn’t stay the night. Telling him that the living room is too messy, that she and Wulf managed to get citric acid on the cushions, that powdered sugar got into the floorboards and there were ants – reasons that are, at least to him, hard to believe when he knows for a fact that Wulf, at least, still knows prestidigitation.

Today had dawned bright and beautiful, with nary a cloud to be seen in the sky, and he’s making the usual walk to their candy store. Nott had still been asleep when he had left, and Jester and Caduceus had been awake but were – occupied with trying to teach Nugget some new trick.

Yasha, Beau, and Fjord were with Orly on the Balleater – Fjord had promised the group that it wasn’t to go looking for the third temple, just that he wanted to see the sea, and Beau had promised him that she would knock him out if he tried to eat any more eyeballs.

Which means he is by himself, this morning, and the air is scented with salt and the ever-increasing scent of sugar and spices the closer he gets to the shop.

It’s nine in the morning when he pushes open the door to the shop, Frumpkin curled around his shoulders – or tries to, because the door is still locked.

He grumbles to himself and feels the top of the doorframe for the spare key that he knows is up there. He would normally be aghast at such lax security, especially for them, but the lock on this door is enchanted to only open with certain people holding the key and he is one of the three people that can even open this door.

He’s fairly sure that the key isn’t even needed, and that Eodwulf just enchanted it so that he would have to hop to reach the door frame.

He touches the key to the doorknob, and the knob twists before he can even turn the key, the metal disappearing from his hand and presumably reappearing on top of the frame.

The inside of the shop is dark, the arcane lights unpowered and heavy curtains blocking the light from coming in through the windows.

It’s strange – the shop doesn’t open until noon or later, depending on the day, but by this time Astrid has usually started the work of cleaning the eating area and preparing the day’s candy.

Everything is quiet, and dark.

There’s a thin line of light coming through the door to the back of the shop, and he heads behind the counter to the door, letting himself in to the living room that is lit from the windows overlooking the scraggly backyard behind the shop.

This room as well is empty, the couches covered in their now normal array of blankets and pillows and thin layers of cat hair, but there is a note and a piece of candy suspiciously placed on the center of the table in the corner.

He grabs the candy before he reads the note – one of Astrid’s newer image candies, with a small slightly wonky cat face that nonetheless resembles Frumpkin and the scent of black currant that brings a smile to his face despite the strangeness of the situation.

The note is written in Sylvan, strangely enough, and he untwists the handwriting in his mind.

Astrid wrote this. Wulf’s handwriting is far, far better.

              _Caleb –_

_Do you know what day it is? I’m sure that you do, given how good you still are at keeping time. But do you remember? Light shining through the fields. The taste of sugar and magic fresh on our tongues. It is bittersweet remembering, but it is a memory of hope that was lost and then found again. It’s Elvendawn, liebling._

There’s a note underneath Astrid’s scrawled Sylvan in Eodwulf’s careful script, that reads _Follow the candy,_ with a small smiley face drawn on the bottom.

He hadn’t – he hadn’t forgotten that it was Elvendawn, but it’s been so long since he had been allowed to celebrate it that he had pushed it aside.

It is bittersweet, those memories of home, but he has spent the last four months mourning his parents and childhood in the company of the only two other people who understand, and that mourning has given him space to think of his parents without immediately succumbing under the weight of his own guilt.

There is another piece of candy wrapped in thin and glossy gauze set at the bottom of the stairs to the rest of the house, and another a few steps above that.

He takes the stairs slowly, his cat still curled around his shoulders. The candy trail continues up the stairs, and then past the tiny kitchen and into the slightly cracked door that leads into their bedroom.

He takes a second to listen and is rewarded with the faintly muffled sound of Eodwulf’s laughter and Astrid’s voice, words in Zemnian that are just outside of his range for him to comprehend but send a pang of familiarity through him.

This seems like a rather elaborate set up for an Elvendawn celebration, but he’s honestly not sure what else this could be.

(There is something that he hopes it could be, but he doesn’t bother to entertain that thought).

He pours the candies that he has collected up to this point into a spare pocket of his coat – notably cleaner, now, then it had been for years. There was very little chance that people were going to be looking for him, here, and the layers of dirt and homelessness that he had worn as a defense were practically unnecessary. It was still ratty, and still smells like the spell components that he has stuffed into his pockets, but it no longer radiated the filth that it had accumulated in Xorhas.

The final piece of candy that he picks up, just outside the door, is placed on a floorboard that creaks when he steps on it, the faint sounds behind the door stopping abruptly.

Strangely enough, the cat in this piece looks less like Frumpkin and more like a bean.

He snaps Frumpkin down to the floor and pushes open the door, the brighter light inside making him blink for a moment.

All the curtains in the bedroom have been flung open, and they sway with the sea scented breeze that comes in through the cracked windows.

There’s also a series of light globules swirling through the room, warm yellow in color, that come to twirl around his head for a moment before settling in the corners of the room, lighting it even more.

Astrid and Wulf are seated on edge of the bed, facing the doorway, and both of their faces radiate nervousness.

He quirks an eyebrow and frowns, scanning the room. Nothing seems out of place – the altar to the Archeart has it’s usual accruement of trinkets and prayer items, with a few new buttons having been donated from Nott and the ever present pile of candy.

Astrid shares a quick glance with Eodwulf. “ _Hallo, liebling_. Happy Elvendawn!” Her voice tilts up at the end, as if she was asking a question.

“Is everything alright?” He asks, stepping tentatively into the room. It is a holiday, but Astrid and Wulf both look and seem too nervous for that to merely be the case.

Wulf nods, and pokes Astrid in the side, who scowls at him and nudges him back.

There’s a flurry of whispered conversation, and he catches a few words – “Tell him,” – “No, you do it,” – “Frumpkin,” – “Where did you,” – and he frowns again, glancing down at where Frumpkin has started to clean his face with his paw at his feet.

The whispers stop, and Eodwulf faces him, rolling his eyes.

Then, “Caleb.”

He tilts his head. “ _Ja_?”

“I’m not doing what Astrid wants me to do –“Eodwulf dodges another poke from Astrid and continues, shuffling away from her slightly on the bed, “ – because I think it’s dumb and overly confusing, grandiose gestures aside.”

Astrid folds her arms over her chest and pouts, almost. “You got to do the candy thing, why can’t –“

“The candy thing was a good idea, this is just confusing –“

“You have no sense of adventure, jeez, Wulf –“

He rubs a hand over his eyes and sighs, and Astrid and Wulf both shut up, slightly sheepish looks on their faces.

“But anyways – Caleb.”

He sighs, again, and meets Eodwulf’s gaze.

“Yes, _liebling_?”

Eodwulf opens his mouth, as if to start, and then shuts it again, turning to look at Astrid in seeming desperation.

She gestures at him, frantically, and doesn’t say anything.

He’s – he really doesn’t know what’s going on, here.

Eodwulf closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

“AstridandIareinlovewithyoustillandalsodoyourememberthattimewhenIproposed-“ He gets out, too fast to understand, before Astrid places a hand over his mouth and cuts off the ramble.

She keeps her hand there even as she looks him in the eyes.

“We’re in love with you,” she says, and he –

First, he pinches the inside of his palm, and decides that the pain means that he isn’t dreaming.

Then, he blinks, and blinks again, and says, faintly, “What –“

“We always have been. And then you were – you were dead, or well, not dead but we thought you were – whatever. But you’re alive? And I know we got married without you, but I’m still in love with you and so is Wulf and you’re here, and alive – Caleb –“

His thoughts are so quiet, for the moment.

He looks down at his hand, at that last piece of candy that he had grabbed, and realizes that the shape inside is not a wonky cat that looks like a bean.

That’s – a heart, he thinks, and when he glances back up at Eodwulf and Astrid both of them are staring at him.

“I thought –“he gets out, and then stops again, too overwhelmed to speak.

Astrid finally releases her hand from Wulf’s mouth.

“We got married without you, Caleb, but you were always – the day with the trader, all those years ago. I said that we – that we should all get married, and have a candy shop – and we thought you were gone, Caleb, so we did it without you but you aren’t gone. And we are so, so in love with you, and we missed you so much – this isn’t.” He stops and looks to Astrid.

She picks up his thread, and says, “This isn’t a proposal, because it’s been so long and we would – if you want in the future, maybe, because we want to but we would – do you want to go on a date?” She finishes, and Eodwulf huffs a tiny laugh.

Frumpkin, at his feet, nudges himself into his leg.

His voice is faint, when he speaks, but clear and seems to almost echo in the small space of their bedroom. “I – ah – yes?”

He blinks, certain in the knowledge that his face is beet red.

“I’m – I’ve been in love with you both since before the academy. Of course I want to – I thought, since you got married –“Astrid’s face falls, the longer he goes on talking.

“That’s – shit.” She scrubs a hand over her face.

Her other hand has stayed clenched by her side, this entire time, and he watches as she reaches it out to him, palm skyward, and uncurls her fingers.

There is a ring sitting there, identical to the ones that he’s seen on Astrid and Eodwulf’s hands since the first time he saw them here.

“Three people can get married, here. Well, anyone can, really, as long as it’s consensual and everyone’s of age – it’s really fascinating, the difference that having an unrestricted pantheon makes in governmental laws,” she starts, and Eodwulf nudges her back on track with a fond smile.

“Right – we got married, yeah, but you were always supposed to be part of that. It was never meant to be just me and Wulf, Caleb.”

Eodwulf swipes a tear off his cheek with his thumb. “And it’s been a long time, so you don’t need to say yes today or tomorrow or even months from now, but – go on a date with us?”

Caleb can feel a tear snaking it’s way down his own cheek, and then another close behind.

He takes a step forward, and then another, and takes the ring out of Astrid’s offering hand.

It fits on his finger like it had been made with him in mind.

He supposes that it has.

He gives them both, his two best friends that he is achingly in love with, a nod, and ignores the tears streaming down his face in favor of the smile that’s bursting across it.

It is Elvendawn, today, and he is sitting in a bedroom on a quilt that he knows Astrid made herself, blues and reds and yellows and greens making a kaleidoscope of brilliant colors that twist into something soft and heavy. There is light streaming through the windows, an oceanic breeze caressing the back of his head, and two hands clasped tight in his own.

A ring on his finger, a yes on his tongue, and hope brewing bright and vibrant in his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading! This was written in less than an hour because I had a burst of inspiration, so if there are any giant flaring mistakes please ignore them. this fic is entirely self indulgent, built on two characters that have yet to even appear in canon, and is, in fact, entirely non canon given the fact that caleb, eodwulf, and astrid apparently,,,, weren't childhood friends, and also everything about the archeart in this is pretty much either made up or based on corellon from the forgotten realms. but man, am i having fun with this. 
> 
> there will be a sequel! it's going to take a while, because while i have roughly 10k words written of it none of it makes much sense, but be on the lookout for that in the future.


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